Being in the second half of your twenties is absolutely excrementory. Yes, I made up a word to have a stab at lavatorial humour since that is the easiest way of getting people interested. Or disgusted. I am sorry if you spilled your coffee over this but if you did, you still aren’t used to the ways of the world. You still haven’t developed a sense of apathy to attempts at lavatorial jokes which themselves are often, such as in this case and excuse my language, crap. If you are revolted, you are probably young. Heck, you might even be in your teens. Or in your early twenties. If so, I wish you an early quarter-life crisis and more excrementory years of twenties to come. Oh, don’t think I am being mean and asking you to skip years of your life. That will happen no matter what I say when you get passed them. I am only being benevolent as a fellow human being (I am not sure if I still am fully) who has been there. Who is living in it but barely. It is just a bag of swear words I’d rather not offend my Word Press readers with.

You have your mid-life crises and your quarter-life crises and your “40 is the new 30” and all that. You have your myriads ways of turning greys to black and laugh-lines to smooth sands of the Sahara. You have your beauty elixirs and your How To Be A YoungWoman at Heart and all that. It is all very fine when you know that you are on the other side. Because you know you are clearly not on this one. It is even better to know, such you are often made to know at age 25, that you are about to change sides. That in the next 25 years of your life you would be wishing to have the last 25 years of your life back. If you have had a boring, useless and disappointing time of the first one then good luck to you because the next will only make you wish to have that boring, useless and disappointing time again and again and with more energy.

The thing is, when you actually are there it is good to be able to at least acknowledge it. But what happens when you have just stepped in? When the question is not about choosing between being young or an adult but knowing that being young will never be a choice again? I have been 26 for about a month now and I have given up. The pastry I had a couple of months ago I would have eaten gladly thinking that I could burn it with my enthusiasm for life. Now, the very thought of a pastry makes me weary. Every time I am tempted to have that pastry The World Health Organization will remind me of how that pastry is going to eat away at my cells and yet sit on them, adding more cells to my already large body mass. And it is worse if you are either unemployed or hate your job or have no idea about how to get to the job that you want. It is too late to pick a guitar now and reinvent yourself. What are you gonna do, join a band with 21 year-olds? What if they nickname you “granny”? Hey, I am all for the granny trend now. Young people are picking up knitting and gardening and comfortable underwear with a passion. But to them, it is a trend, something that is cool to do because it is not the expected thing for them to do. To me, it is my future.

And you have everyone else. You know, all your friends you grew up with. All your friends who have jobs that pay more than yours. All your friends that are getting married or are at least engaged. They have better clothes than you. Better hair than you. You even envy their ice-cream even though you can buy the same ice-cream for the same amount of money. You envy their ice-cream because their ice-cream doesn’t mean as much to them as it means to you. They could have the exact amount of happiness at that same moment with or without that ice-cream. For you, however, that ice-cream has to be much, much more. You ignore that all the ice-cream in the world could not cure you of envy. And what you also fail to notice because you are too consumed in self-pity is that they all feel exactly the same as you.

Past your quarter-life, it is stupid to try to be young and idiotic to try to be old. You do not have the energy for the former, you do not have the money for the latter. I can neither wear a neon pink mini-skirt nor get a Thai massage. And those are all superficial things but age is superficial. Think of a time when there were no mirrors. Even if someone told you you have wrinkles you could never know. They’d probably have to point to their own face to make sense and then it would be all right. There would be a solidarity formed between the two of you based on these strange ridges that seem to appear for no reason at all. Memory loss wouldn’t be an issue either because how much can there have been possibly to remember in a time before mirrors? As for enthusiasm, who cares? All you had to do when you were young was hunt and gather food. You also had babies to grow up and hunt and gather food for you. Being old was a win-win situation.

I am sad at having lost my youth. Well, that is putting things mildly. I am howling inside all the time because the EDM (electronic dance music) that has been playing in this world constantly for the past 30 years is just getting stupider and stupider and I might not be able to take it anymore because I will grow old and it will remain the same, young and trendy. On the other hand, I still have no idea about how to invest my mythical earnings properly to have a beautiful flat when I get older or appear to be an adult, responsible human being at a job interview who has an awareness of the world and what she can bring to The Team. No, I belch at the young people’s happiness and get anxious over anticipatory flatulence for old people’s situations.

If you are in your second half of your twenties or remember how it was, would you kindly like to share? Mind you, I might just envy you.

6 thoughts on “Of Being Mid-Twentysomething”

You made me laugh! As a “new 30”-er, I kind of feel like time is running away, slipping through my fingers. And I am kind of not ready yet to see the 5 and 0 getting so bloody close! As I still feel like a 26 year old. Not younger, because then you kind of have no clue, really ;-). Enjoy the trip to 30. I felt 25 – 30 was the best.